6.2 Cloning Flashcards
What are the advantages of Natural Clones?
- No need for outward fertilisation
- Less susceptible if lack of population
- Quicker
- Can be successful in favourable habitat
What are the disadvantages of natural clones?
- More likely to die of one disease
- More likely for genetic diseases to affect due to small gene pool
- No genetic diversity
- Susceptible to environmental changes
- No natural selection therefore changes adaptations
What is a meristem?
Plant cells with the ability to divide and differentiate into a range of cell types
What are the steps of plant cuttings?
- A small length of stem is cut from main plant
- Base of cutting is dipped in rooting powder which contains auxin
- Once new roots have started to grow cutting can be planted into soil
What are the disadvantages of the plant cutting method?
- Risk of pathogen/infection
- Loss of water dryingout before roots grow
- Pathogens may be in sample plant
- Damage may be done to original plant
What are the steps of micropropagation?
- Explants (tissue from parent plants) are sterilised
- Tissue samples placed in agar containing nutrients and auxins
- Stimulates shoot and root growth and develops plantlets
- Plantlets planted into compost
What are the advantages of micropropagation?
- Fast way of getting new plants
- Can propagate a genetically engineered plant
- Can retain genetics of a unique species Z
- Can be done for plants hard to grow from seed
What are the disadvantages of micropropagation?
- Facilities are expensive
- No genetic variation
- Seedless plants
- Labour intensive
- If plant tissue has virus all plant tissues have virus
What is the meaning of totipotent?
- Can turn into any cell to make an organism
What is the process of embryo splitting?
- Embryo forms by sexual reproduction
- Embryo splits into single cells
- Cells divide by mitosis to form embryos
- Embryos implanted into surrogate cows
What are the benefits of embryo splitting?
- All share the same DNA
- Farmer could create a set/heard of elite farm animals by selective breeding
What is the process Somatic Cell,Nuclear Transfer?
- Enucleated egg cell is joined with a mammary cell from udder and combined using electric shock
- Combined cell now has a single nucleus
- Blastocyst formed by combined cells through mitosis
What is neuropathic cloning?
Clone organisms
What are the benefits of neuropathic cloning?
- No rejection issues
- Could grow new organisms
How is neuropathic cloning conducted?
- Adult cell from parent is combined with denucleated human ovum using mild electric shock
- New pre-embryo cell containing patient DNA begins to develop
- Stem cells then removed from embryo and cultured to grow
What are the uses of cloning?
Animal models of disease- learn about disease
Therapeutic cloning- Repairing damaged or diseased tissue
Reviving extinct species using closely related species
Saving endangered species- Surviving individuals can donate healthy cells
Reproducing a pet
Drug production
Points for cloning?
- High yield from animals
- Embryos can be replicated
- Clone specific animals
- Rare,endangered or extinct species can be saved
Points against cloning?
- Often unsuccessful
- Inefficient process
- Malformation
- Shortens life span
Why is it difficult to clone primates?
- Spindle proteins are too close to the nucleus so damages occur
- Mothers have complicated menstrual cycle
What is bioremediation?
- Using microorganisms to break down pollutants in soil or water
How can natural organisms be used in bioremediation?
- Can break down plastics,hydrocarbon and oils slowly
- Can be made more efficient by providing more sources for growth
How can GM organisms be used in bioremediation?
- Could potentially breakdown harmful chemicals and heavy metals
How can plants be used in bioremediation?
- PLants can be adapted to concentrate high concentrations of an element without toxicity
- Can take up metals from the soil
What are the features of batch culture?
- Inoculated into fixed volume of medium
- Nutrients are used up
- Waste builds up
- Process is stopped before the death phase
- Products need to be processed
What are the features of the continuous culture?
- Sterile nutrient medium is added continually until it reaches exponential
- Culture broth is continually removed and continually added
- Waste is removed to keep culture volume constant
- No stationary phase
- Needs processing
What are primary metabolites?
Substances wanted are part of the normal essential function of a microorganism
What are secondary metabolites?
- Organism produces substances not essential for normal growth e.g. many pigments so losing it does not harm organism
What are the limiting factors of bacterial growth curve?
- Not enough nutrients
- Build up in toxins
- Oxygen levels
- Temperature increase due to lots of respiration
- CO2 build up
What is aseptic technique?
- Wipe desk/work surface with ethanol
- Wash hands and use hand sanitiser
- Close windows
How to work out serial dilutions?
- Multiply by the dilution factor (e.g. 4 dilutions = 10^4)
Why are serial dilutions used for bacterial counting?
- So individual colonies are individual
What is the definition of biotechnology?
- Using a microorganism to make a product
What is an isolated enzymes?
Enzymes separated for an industrial purpose
How are enzymes immobilised ?
Attached to an inert support system
Why are enzymes immobilised?
- Less wasteful-Can be recovered
- More efficient- Prevents enzymes from contaminating the end product
- No unwanted side products
- Maximise efficiency by providing ideal conditions
What are the disadvantages of immobilising enzymes?
- Reduced efficiency- Immobilising enzyme may reduce activity rate
- High initial costs of materials and bioreactor
- More complex technical issues so harder to fix
What are the four methods of immobilising enzymes?
- Absorption to inorganic surfaces- Simple and cheap to do which can be used with many different products
- Surface immobilisation- Enzymes are strongly bound meaning pH and temperature have little effect
- Entrapment in matrix- Trapped in polysaccharides or gelatine which is widely applicable
- Membrane entrapment- In micro capsules simple to do
